Home entertainment systems, including television (TV) and media centers, are converging with the Internet and providing access to a large number of available sources of content, such as video, movies, TV programs, music, etc. As a result, numerous challenges have emerged related to the display and navigating process for that accessible content.
Broadcasters, eager to test the three dimensional (3D) display to the home video market, want to adopt a broadcast format that is backward compatible with all existing high definition (HD) capable set-top boxes in the field. The broadcasters have recently chosen to begin 3D video broadcasts with a half horizontal resolution split-screen encoding of the left and right stereo video views. In this scenario, as well as other split-screen video scenarios, it is the display device that converts from the split-screen format to a format that can be perceived as stereo video by the viewer.
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has elected the multi-view compression algorithm, also known as Multiview Video Coding (MVC), to support efficient compression of stereo video stored on 3D enabled Blu-ray discs. The BDA has also specified that 3D video be encoded with 1280×720p60 or 1920×1080p24 resolution and frame rate available for each eye. Current and previous generation set-top boxes are not capable of supporting the decoding of MVC coded video, and are also not capable of supporting any other known method that would deliver a video stream of equivalent resolution and frame rate as mandated by the BDA. As a result, broadcasters will be pushed to show an upgrade path to Blu-ray quality 3D video in the future. However, broadcasters will also be obligated to continue support of the initial group of 3D video customers using legacy decoders and half horizontal resolution split-screen video. This obligation rules out a switch to MVC compression unless the broadcaster is willing to pay for an equipment swap to upgrade the decoders used by the initial 3D customers.
Therefore, there is a need for techniques to provide encoding and broadcasting of full resolution 3D video while supporting legacy 2D and 3D video.